What was so bad about the security clearance aspect?
The blackmail and sabotage argument, as near as I can tell, is a farce because our enemies and "friends" are engaged in massive corporate espionage. If it were a real concern to them than they would use thier powers to require the same level of scrutiny on the private sector.
In addition to that they say be truthful so you don't have anything to hide to prevent possible blackmail by foreign powers, but in reality it's the truthful ones who don't make it through the process.
I've come to the conclusion that it's really just about having an excuse deny employment to "people not like us."
That assumes there would be many attempts at this kind of blackmail, and that any attempts that did occur were discovered and documented.
> I'd like to see some link to that.
Even if the conditions above were satisfied (which I find highly unlikely), this assumes that we (the public) have access to the documentation.
Guess it was significantly less exaggerated that I thought.
I think there's a lot of people that would like the associated intrigue that would come with this, it may be a cheaper way of hiring good developers that have a bit of a vanity streak.
In other words, you are not your productivity, you are required to live their moral code in your off hours.
And then on top of that, even with all the screening they do, they still stop the Snowdens from infiltrating, still can't stop foreign intelligence, still can't get a sysadmin worth their salt to keep our future President's clandestine email server safe from the public's prying eyes!
I lived in several European countries, and as far as I know there's no way an employer can force you to take a drug test, with the exception of people handling heavy machinery. If you are on drugs while you're at your job this will of course have consequences, but a drug test that would reveal drug use in your free time is nothing the employer should be allowed to do or even care about.
As an example, the rules in the UK clearly say that you need consent and that it has to be required by the nature of the job, which should exclude most (if not all) office jobs. [1]
[1] https://www.gov.uk/monitoring-work-workers-rights/drug-testi...
So, yes, in almost any job you could be required to take a drug test and be fired if you refuse.
Do you have numbers to back this up? Because almost every place I've worked at has had this policy. I think it's a terrible policy and should be illegal, but it's been pretty standard everywhere. Maybe it's not common in SV, but everywhere else it seems to be the norm, IME.
I even worked for a company that ran drug testing programs for the government and they did not drug test.
http://money.cnn.com/2015/06/15/news/companies/dish-employee...
http://cable.tmcnet.com/topics/cable/articles/2013/01/07/321...
"Out of 617 ratings on glassdoor.com, fully 246 called themselves “very dissatisfied.” The number of employees considering themselves “very satisfied” was just 48. Some comments even suggest that executive meddling may be involved in the “very satisfied” scores, with one commenter saying “Joe Clayton (CEO) put us up to upgrading our score.” Another commenter called their time with Dish “...like a prison sentence.”